Is this thing on? : Virtualization

Microsoft IT Insight Workshop on Virtualization

Scott Schnoll — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:56:00 GMT

We’ve just announced a new Microsoft IT Insight Workshop on Virtualization. Insight Workshops are fee-based offerings delivered in collaboration between Microsoft IT and Microsoft Services. This new workshop offers key insights into Microsoft IT’s virtualization efforts and how Microsoft IT plans and executes deployment, management, and leverage of virtualization in its environment (including datacenters, branch offices, and test/development scenarios).

Details are at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb687787.aspx#Virt, and you can also contact your MS account manager or Insightw@microsoft.com for more information.

Exchange Server and Hardware Virtualization

Scott Schnoll — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:22:00 GMT

Today Microsoft announced some significant changes to its licensing and support policies for applications in hardware virtualization environments. For details on the announcement, including links to updated support policies and recommendations for Exchange 2007 SP1 in a hypervisor environment, see Microsoft Virtualization and Licensing Announcements.

Hyper-V has RTM'd and is Available!

Scott Schnoll — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 06:41:00 GMT

Today, Microsoft released Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the hypervisor-based virtualization technology that is a feature of select versions of Windows Server 2008. I've been using Hyper-V for some time, and it is rock solid, easy-to-use, and scalable. As I blogged previously, both the TechNet (1 million hits a day) and the MSDN (3 million hits a day) Web properties are running inside of Hyper-V and have been for weeks, without any issues.

Since then, because things went so well for TechNet and MSDN, Microsoft Operations migrated 25% of the Web servers running microsoft.com, one of the world's largest Web properties, to Hyper-V. We've not encountered any performance, stability, or availability issues at all. More Web servers for microsoft.com will be deployed in Hyper-V once the needed hardware arrives. For more details on this, see http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/archive/2008/06/25/microsoft-com-powered-by-hyper-v.aspx.

Hyper-V is quite flexible, supporting a number of virtual machine (VM) guests, such as:

Windows Server 2008
Windows Server 2003
Windows 2000 Server
Windows Vista
Windows XP
Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux

See http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/hyperv-supported-guest-os.aspx for specific details.

As the Exchange team announced at Microsoft TechEd recently, Microsoft will be publishing a support statement with respect to Exchange Server within 60 days of today. While you're waiting, if you have a server that is a 64-bit environment and supports hardware-assisted virtualization (Intel VT or AMD-V) technology, I highly recommend download and trying Hyper-V. Hyper-V is available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F3AB3D4B-63C8-4424-A738-BADED34D24ED. Hyper-V is also expected to be available on Windows Update/Microsoft Update on July 8, 2008.

For other information about Hyper-V, see the Virtualization Team blog at http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2008/06/26/wu-hoo-only-12-days-to-wu.aspx.

Below are some Hyper-V resources:

Microsoft Virtualization Home Page - http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/default.mspx
Virtualization Case Studies - http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/case-studies.mspx
Virtualization Solution Accelerators - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/solutionaccelerators/cc197910.aspx
Windows Server 2008 Virtualization & Consolidation: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/virtualization-consolidation.aspx
Hyper-V FAQ - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/hyperv-faq.aspx
Optimized Desktop Infrastructure (VDI and much more): http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/enterprise/default.mspx
Virtualization TechCenter: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/default.aspx
How to Install Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/hyperv-install.aspx
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Performance Tuning Guide - http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/sysperf/Perf_tun_srv.mspx
MSDN & TechNet Powered by Hyper-V - http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2008/05/20/msdn-and-technet-powered-by-hyper-v.aspx
MSDN & TechNet Powered by Hyper-V Whitepaper - http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/C/5/6C559B56-8556-4097-8C81-2D4E762CD48E/MSCOM_Virtualizes_MSDN_TechNet_on_Hyper-V.docx

Blogs:

Webcasts:

For news about Hyper-V, see:

Exchange Server 2007 and Hyper-V

Scott Schnoll — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 22:15:00 GMT

While at TechEd IT Pro North America 2008, I also had the opportunity to attend Brent Alinger's session on Exchange Server 2007 and Hyper-V. Brent is a Senior Test Lead on the Exchange Team at Microsoft, and he's leading our testing efforts around Hyper-V.

Brent described a number of terms, such as the Hyper-V root (which is the parent or the host machine), Hyper-V guest (which is the child or virtual machine), virtual hard disks (VHD), passthrough disks, fixed and dynamic disks, and virtual machine state files. Some of the more noteworthy bits of info from the session are:

Within 60 days of Hyper-V's RTM, the Exchange team will publish a detailed support statement for Hyper-V, and a TechNet article with best practices. I'm part of the Exchange Virtualization Working Group and will be helping to deliver some of this content.
Customers should not deploy Exchange on Hyper-V until our support guidance is available.
Early results show that performance of Exchange 2007 on Hyper-V is quite good, and that it scales very well from 1-4 processors per VM.

In terms of best practices and requirements, Brent shared the following:

We're only supporting guests running Exchange Server 2007 SP1 on Windows Server 2008.
We're only supporting fixed disks, and not dynamic disks.
Storage should be on spindles that are separate from the Guest operating system VHD physical storage.
Storage must be SCSI passthrough or iSCSI (with a preference of SCSI passthrough for queues, databases and log files).
All Exchange server roles, except for the Unified Messaging server role, will be supported.
There's a limit on VHD size of 2040 GB.

Brent also mentioned that Hyper-V is a good fit when Exchange servers in branch offices cannot be consolidated to a central datacenter (for example, because of bandwidth or connectivity issues).

In terms of workload, not every workload is a candidate for virtualization. For example, server roles such as Client Access and Hub Transport can be good candidates, but a more heavy hitter like the Mailbox role (which often uses all available resources on a physical server) might not be the best candidate for virtualizing.

It was a great session, and you can expect to hear a lot more about Exchange 2007 and Hyper-V over the coming months.

TechNet and MSDN Site Changes

Scott Schnoll — Fri, 23 May 2008 19:40:00 GMT

Many cool changes were made this week to both the TechNet and MSDN Web sites. These changes include a slick new look to the Exchange Server TechCenter, as well.

What's also extremely cool, are the changes you can't see - both the TechNet (1 million hits a day) and the MSDN (3 million hits a day) Web sites are running inside of Hyper-V (and actually have been for weeks, without any issues)! Check out http://www.virtualization.info/2008/05/microsoft-migrates-msdn-and-technet-on.html for more information.